Preparing DESIS Assembly

In less than one months, the 1st of June, in the framework of the Cumulus Conference, in Kolding, the DESIS Network Assembly will take place. As always, it will be an important opportunity to meet and discuss where we are and where we would like to go.

Beyond warmly welcoming the DESIS Labs which applied to become network members in the last months, the Kolding DESIS Assembly will be focused in two points:

1. DESIS Lab activity mapping

The idea is that the repository of projects presented in our website (in the section Labs) is highly relevant. For two reasons: the first and most obvious one is that they are the tangible expression of what DESIS Network really is. If someone wants to know us, or if we want to present who we are to somebody else, the Labs section of the website is our best introduction.

But their importance has a second motivation too: they could also become an important source of information on the state-of-the-art of design for social innovation in the design schools world-wide.

This is way, in my program, I personally committed to analyze it. And this is what in this moment we are doing. The first results will be presented at the DESIS Assembly in Kolding.

2. DESIS Actions

As you have seen in our Website, and in the Newsletter, we decided to support the international initiative Stand Up for Democracy. This choice motivations have been already presented (see Ezio’s and mine previous editorials). What I want to introduce here is the fact that, with this choice, we are also introducing a new kind of DESIS initiative. Until now, we had: Showcases, Thematic Clusters, Regional Clusters, Philosophy Talks. Now we are adding a new one. It could be defined Big Topic Action and its nature could be seen as something between a communication campaign and a design activism program. In fact, it focuses on a given subject for a given period, trying to drive interest and creative initiatives around it. This time the big topic has been the issue of democracy, and I think that, for the next months we should concentrate on that. But, in the future, other big topics could appear. I think the assembly should discuss about that for what regards both the present big topic on democracy and the general idea of DESIS Big Topic Actions.